Best Australian Yarn: A Highway to call Home by Sam Cecins

This place is my home. Out here where the world stretches endless and empty. The flat, sunblasted land rolling by through the windscreen. Sparse patches of saltbush and speargrass that ripple like tufts of wheat in the slipstream of the truck. I drive with one hand on the wheel and the other arm resting on the open window sill and I can feel the rumble of the tyres beneath me. Not a truckstop, a passing vehicle, another soul in sight. I know every kilometre of this highway. The rocky outcrop there. The slope of that dune. Once I sat down with a calculator and added up all of the cargo runs I could remember making across the plain. I have travelled over 500,000 kilometres between the same two destinations. Back and forth enough to pass the moon. Ahead of me, the road sweeps away and disappears into the heat shimmer. Somewhere over that horizon, beyond this vast in-between, is the place I used to call home. And a girl, a woman now, who used to call me father. * I wonder if she would remember living with me. Our time together was mostly spent in the twilight hours. The sky slowly bruising purple as the sun set over the red-raw country and my ute rolled back into the campsite. Our home, a ramshackle caravan with cinderblocks where the tyres should be. Her mother out front tending to the campfire. Stirring a cast-iron pot set atop the grate while the flames crackled and popped and spit sparks into the air. Her clothes and hair smelling of smoke as I kissed her cheek. There at her mother’s skirt would be our girl with her wild hair and her wild eyes. The red dirt everywhere. On her bare feet, staining her cheeks, and smeared on her clothes. I used to pick her up and lift her to my face so that she could tug at my beard with her small hands. I had thought it was a perfect picture. And perhaps for me it had been just so.But only for me. I have an old photo of the three of us from back then. Creased from all the times it was folded and flattened back out. Even in that faded moment, her mother’s eyes are dulled by exhaustion. They were once wild too, but that fire was slowly smothered. Each day a little more, until the fatigue had settled deep enough to etch her soul. Would my girl still remember those times? Maybe it is best that she doesn’t. * I wake in the driver seat with my chin nodding against my chest. The truck cabin is jerking and shuddering and the seatbelt has pulled tight across my chest. One finger still hangs defiantly from the steering wheel. A spark of adrenaline shoots up my bloodstream. Through the grimy windshield I can see the truck has veered onto the shoulder of the highway. In the mirror, the trailers are kicking up a wake of red dust. I feel for the pedals beneath my feet. Already the first trailer is swaying on the soft sand. The second follows and the couplings groan. The truck is now in the control of greater powers. Momentum. Tyre traction. Luck. The cabin jackknifes and I bounce against the driverside door. The back of my head cracking against the glass and the seatbelt biting at my throat. The truck skids sideways across the gravel, tyres squealing, and then rattles to a stop. My eyes are watery and the taste of burning rubber is in my mouth and up my nose. I unclip the belt and kick open the door and fall out onto the dirt. The dust is like smoke in the air. I run a hand along the ripples of the corrugated steel. The trailers have twisted into a zig zag, but none have toppled or come loose from their chassis. I rest against the last trailer, waiting for my blood to settle. The sun hangs low over the horizon, tinging the clouds there scarlet like a drop of dye in water. There is a pair of square-tailed kites circling in the sky. Had I died here, the only witnesses would have been those birds. After a moment, I climb back up into the cabin and sit there. Something wet trickles through my hair and I don’t know if it is sweat or blood. Not a single other vehicle has appeared over either horizon. I turn the key in the ignition and the engine rumbles back to life. * It’s dark when I come up on the roadhouse. The neon glare of the sign in the distance is a beacon through the chalky gloom. I pull the truck into the lot and switch off the headlights then the engine. A couple of other trucks are parked here and the lights are still on in the diner. I get out and hop down on the loose gravel to smoke. The air is almost cold enough to sting. My breath turning to vapour beneath the orange lights. Another driver is out smoking by his truck and we exchange salutes with our cigarettes glowing incandescent between our fingers. The night sky is different out here. The stars so many and so bright, like pearlescent powder against the black. You might think you’ve wandered onto some other planet. Some younger and more vibrant part of the cosmos. When I’m done, I flick the butt onto the gravel and crush out the ember with my boot heel. The other driver has headed inside to sleep in the motel. I climb back up into the truck and fold out the cot. I lay there for a while, listening to the faint buzz of the lamps. I can’t think of a reason to put it off any longer, so I slip my phone out of my shirt pocket. The text message notification is still there. Unread since I left Adelaide. The one line of its preview reads: Hello. I believe you are my Father… There are no other messages. No missed calls. I hover my finger there above the notification. I know that if I open the message and read it entirely, there will be decisions to make. I withdraw my finger and return the phone to my pocket. It takes a few hours before I finally drift to sleep. * I set off in the early morning. The daylight is just breaking fresh and golden over the flats. The sound of the engine caroming out over the vastness of the plain like the howl of some lonely animal. I’m alone with my thoughts, but for the pair of kites soaring overhead. Maybe they are my watchful companions. They glide over the truck and reappear through the passenger side window. Tucking their wings and diving low over the saltscrub. For some reason I find my thoughts drifting to the many fights I had with her mother. Back then the blood ran hot in my veins and I never gave an inch on anything. Once she told me that she wanted to spend Christmas in the city with her family. I fought her on it all the way till the next morning. We sat in the cramped kitchen of the caravan with a kerosene lamp sputtering on the little fold out table between us. Her pleading and me denying. Getting louder and louder, while our girl pretended to sleep on her makeshift bunk. Until we were interrupted by the birds’ dawn warbling. We looked at each other blinking. Slid open the shutters to see the sun peeking over the horizon. We never did go to the city for Christmas. Maybe that’s why I didn’t argue the day she told me she was leaving. Her chin raised and a packed suitcase ready by her side. I just nodded, went to the cooler box and got a beer while our daughter stood behind her mother, one hand gripping her skirt as she peeked out from around her knee. Perhaps by then I had lost the will to fight. Or maybe I wanted to make amends for all the other times. One thing that did matter weighed against a million things that did not. I lived alone on the campsite afterward, but I spent most of my time working at the cattle station. Until the drought came and the pastureland went arid. What clumps of bluebush and Mitchell grass remained dried pale and gaunt like half-buried bones sticking up out of the dirt. My perfect picture. Hollowed first and then withered to dust. One of the kites rises into the sky, something clutched in its talons. Its partner comes to meet it and they roll in the air, tearing at whatever prey they have snared. There is dust stinging in my eyes. It’s just dust in my eye. * By the time I’ve dropped my cargo at the port and returned to the depot, I can feel every kilometre of the journey. My temples twinge when I turn my head. My back aches. My shoulders. My arse. I return my keys to the front desk, hoping to slink away quickly, when Merv emerges from his office and grabs me by the elbow. “Come on, Bill. I want to show you something,” he says and leads me up the steel staircase to the breakroom. I’m too exhausted to protest. The other drivers and the administration staff are gathered there, sitting on the old mouldering furniture or standing against the flaking yellow walls. They holler and clap when we enter. I don’t even know where to look. Set out on the table is a cake. Chocolate sponge with numeric candles in the shape of 100 and a little toy truck on the top. “Do you even know what this is?” Merv says to me with a chuckle. He turns to the crowd. “He doesn’t even know what this is for!” “I know I’m not that old,” I mutter, nodding at the cake. “Bill,” Merv says. “You just completed your hundredth trip across the Nullarbor.” There are more cheers. Slaps on the back. I tell them I haven’t been counting, but it isn’t true * It is dusk when I get back to the apartment block. Some of the lights are on in the neighbours’ windows and as I trudge across the carpark to the stairwell I can see their shadows moving about. The apartment is as I left it. A pile of last week’s clothes on the floor. The dishes still soaking in the sink. These are the chores bequeathed by my past self and the water has gone grey and stagnant. I take a boxed meal out of the freezer. A layer of frost has crusted over the cover and I brush it away with the back of my hand. Slow cooked lamb shank the cover reads. I put the meal in the microwave and get a beer out of the fridge and take a swig. It’s sour. Maybe gone flat. I drink it anyway. Standing there in the cold light of the open refrigerator. I’ve left my phone sitting on the counter. I know I won’t have any new calls or messages, but I pick it up anyway. Decision time. I open the message and skim through those dizzying words. …believe you are my Father…Mother’s name is… live in Perth… would love to meet. I’ve typed a reply and it is sitting there unsent when the microwave pings. Dinner bell. I eat and gradually drift to sleep in the sofa chair. The glow of the television shifting on the walls. The murmuring of late night talk shows a pale mimicry of conversation. * When I wake the sun is just starting to leak through the gaps in my blinds. I go to the fridge and get out the jug of water and sip straight from the spout. Condensation beading on the glass. I can see the phone on the counter and there is a new message. I’m almost too nervous to look, but when I do it’s not her. It’s Merv. When I get to the depot, he invites me into his office and closes the door behind us. I sit down at the big mahogany desk. “What’s this all about?” I ask. He spends the next few minutes speaking in corporate jargon and I have no idea why I’m here. He’s talking about things like mergers. Consolidation. Redundancy. That one catches my ear. “Redundancy?” I ask. “Like my job is gone?” “This job, Bill,” he says tapping the desk as if I ever spent a day in the office. “This job is gone, but there are other opportunities.” “Okay.” “We’re opening up a new depot up north. We’ll need drivers and they’ll need training. You’re one of our most experienced guys, so I’ve put in a good word for you.” “Up north,” I say. “You mean like Geraldton?” “No, I mean like Broome,” Merv says. “Broome,” I repeat. “I think you’d love it up there, Bill. All that open space. I’m sure you’ll find some highway to call home.” The office is starting to feel hot. The ceiling fan is thumping overhead, but all it seems to do is push around the warm air. “What if I can’t go up north?” I ask. “Then I’m afraid that’s it,” Merv says sombrely. “You’re entitled to a severance payment. But there isn’t any work for you here now.” I nod slowly. “I’ve got to say, I’m a bit surprised Bill,” Merv says. “I honestly thought you’d jump all over the opportunity.” “Well,” I say. “I do think I could use some kind of change.” * The café isn’t the sort of place I usually frequent. It’s more of a garden than anything else. Flowers and creepers and indoor plants. Uniformed baristas gruelling over the coffee like it’s fine cuisine. I’m wearing the new shirt I bought. It turns out when you work somewhere for fifteen years, severance pay is actually pretty good. The shirt is a button up and it feels too tight at the throat. But I guess the point isn’t to feel comfortable. The point is to make an effort. It must be a popular spot, because most of the tables are taken up by groups. Couples on dates. Friends laughing over breakfast. There is a lone woman sitting at a corner table, warming her hands on a steaming mug. She is wearing a plain woollen jumper and jeans. I linger at the window, watching her. Her hair is dyed blonde and smoothed down and flattened. Any trace of wildness brushed out, but for one defiant curl that has sprung loose over her left eye. The bell jangles as I push open the door and she looks up at me. Our eyes meet and she smiles. I return the smile and step inside. It is the first step I have taken in many years that actually feels like moving forward.